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Chicken Pudding
Dress and cut one chicken into small pieces, put it into a saucepan or kettle with a little water, season with salt and pepper, let boil until it begins to grow tender, then take out and put into a three-quart pudding dish; have ready one quart green corn grated or cut fine, to which add three eggs beaten light and one pint sweet milk; season with salt and pepper, and pour this mixture over the chicken, dredge thickly with flour, lay on bits of butter and bake until done.-Mrs. A. Wilson, Rye, N. Y.
A chicken fricassee set in a fresh corn custard, from an era when "bake until done" was all the direction a cook expected. The gaps worth filling are the oven temperature, the corn, and how far to take the chicken before it goes into the dish.
- The hinge: don't cook the chicken through firstThe parboiling is meant to stop at "begins to grow tender" — roughly 20 minutes at a bare simmer for a cut-up 3 to 4 lb bird. It finishes in the oven inside the custard; boiled to done first, the meat comes out stringy after another hour of baking.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. Bake at about 350F for roughly 55 to 70 minutes, until the custard is set at the center and the surface is browned. An egg-and-milk custard is prone to curdling and weeping if the oven is run hot, so keep the heat moderate.
- Green corn"Green corn" is fresh sweet corn at the milk stage, not a green variety. A quart grated takes roughly 8 to 10 ears. Grating on a box grater against the cut cob releases the starchy milk that thickens the pudding; slicing kernels off whole gives a looser, more separate result. Thawed frozen corn works but should be pulsed briefly in a processor to break the kernels.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk; 'sweet' distinguishes it from the sour milk or buttermilk that period recipes also call for.
- Dress and cut"Dress" means draw and clean the bird, already done for you. Cut into small pieces means jointed, then the larger pieces halved, so the meat distributes through a three-quart dish.
- Dredge thickly with flourThis is a top crust of sorts — the flour absorbs the butter and browns. Two to three tablespoons sifted evenly over the surface is enough; more than that leaves a raw, pasty layer.
- LiquidThe cooking broth is not called for in the pudding, but a few tablespoons poured over the chicken before the custard goes on keeps the meat from drying. Save the rest for gravy.
- YieldA three-quart dish serves six generously as a main course.
Corn puddings run deep in American cookery, and this is the savory, main-dish end of the family: fresh corn, eggs and milk used as a binder for meat rather than as a side dish sweetened with sugar. Green corn — corn picked young, while the kernels still give milk — was a strictly seasonal ingredient before canning and freezing, and cookbooks of the period offer various ways to use it up. The Dixie Cook Book, compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox and published in the 1880s, was assembled largely from contributions signed with names and towns, and the towns are not all Southern; this one comes from Rye, New York. The book's title marketed a regional identity that its contributor list only partly supported.